Solar System Simulation
- 5 Devlogs
- 29 Total hours
A realistic solar system simulation with realistic distances between objects, precise earth and moon position for simulating solar & lunar eclipses and cool graphics on earth!
Ship #1
Pending review
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
I made a web application that simulates our solar system. At first, I wanted to make a satellite tracker app with a realistic earth model, but after a while I decided I wanted to have also other planets in the background, so I started working on that. I also wanted the moon, so I added moons to all planets, and soon enough a whole solar system simulation was born. Later I decided it would be cool to simulate solar and lunar eclipses, but when I tried it, the moon and earth didn’t align at all, so of course I had to fix it. And I also did. At this point I decided that I’m not making a satellite tracker app, so I transitioned to the solar system simulation app. I specifically wanted realistic distances between planets, moons, etc. to show the massive difference there is, and I added the ability to view all planets from close up and also the whole solar system. At this point the UI still looked terrible, I’m a really bad UI designer, so I decided to use my free three prompts to claude opus 4.8 for exactly this. After that I cleaned up the code and the project was finished!
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
23m 33s logged
I deployed the project to github pages, added an icon, and added this image to the README
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
5h 42m 52s logged
I polished the UI with the help of some AI, it looks way better now in my opinion. I also optimized the app a lot by for example downscaling the textures and optimizing some parts of the code, and it loads now a lot faster than before. Then I added a texture to the moon and seasonal textures to earth that change based on what month it is.
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
9h 14m 57s logged
Firstly I fixed some major errors in the solar system simulation, like the planets spinning in the wrong direction, the earth not aligning it’s rotation with the sun correctly, etc. Other than that I improved the UI a little bit, it now also shows the current time in the simulation and I also added a toggle for the orbit paths when the earth is focused. Then I added these lines that show the tilt of planets. I also improved the sun’s shader so it looks better and changed the earth’s atmosphere shader so it doesn’t display those jumps as it did before. (PS: Did you know Uranus has for some reason a massive 98 degree tilt like this?)
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
9h 19m 16s logged
I made a simulation of our solar system. It isn’t extremely precise, because when I tested some solar eclipses, it didn’t align completely (well it didn’t align at all…), but I want to improve this in the future. I did use a lot of AI to help me with the position and rotation calculation system, because that was a lot of complex math and it would take me ages to get something working 🙏 . After that I reworked the earth scene to display this more realistic model of earth and hide the orbit paths when I focus it. I also added some movement to the clouds, it looks much better when they move at least somehow.
@CyberIntruder
on
Solar System Simulation
4h 13m 4s logged
I didn’t have an idea of what I want to make at the start, so I naturally asked AI. One of the first ideas it gave me was this satellite tracker web app thing, so I decided to start doing that. After some time though I decided to make firstly a super realistic scene with earth, so I worked on that. It’s not done yet, not even close, but I’m slowly getting there! (PS: There’s also a moon in the screenshot!)
